Sculptor David Smith will now be helmed by the artist’s daughters Rebecca and Candida Smith, who take over from executive director Peter Stevens, who has worked on the late artist’s legacy for 35 years. “We are very grateful to Peter Stevens for his commitment to the work of our father over these many years. Candida and I will continue to build on that legacy with a view toward ushering in new scholarship and new perspectives.”  (more…)

A new art fair called Felix LA will launch next year in conjunction with Frieze Los Angeles, Art News reports, located at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. “I had a strong feeling that a lot of what I enjoyed about the art world was missing,” says founder and collector Dean Valentine. (more…)

Installation view. All images via the Gagosian Gallery.

Prototypes of Imagination, an exhibition of new work by Katharina Grosse, is on view at the Gagosian Gallery through July 27, 2018. Grosse is well known for her in situ paintings that respond to the environment in which they are produced, typically with explosive color rendered directly onto architecture, interiors, and landscapes.  Employing bold colors and ambitious movement, her works test the limits of boundaries and redefine space. Her mold-breaking paintings and intricate constructions have challenged the contained space of the canvas and, in this exhibition, the boundaries between imagination and reality.

The artist’s use of an industrial spray gun has provoked comparisons of her work with street art or graffiti, as she coats the objects in her path, at times the walls and windows of the exhibition space, with bright color. These works can be seen as a meditation on the subjective and immersive experience of painting, as Grosse integrates events and experiences that emerge during the construction process into the artwork. In Prototypes of Imagination, Grosse seeks to “try out—and dramatically compress—the characteristics of reality” by building prototypes that can be reenacted and applied to other endeavors.

As in prior shows, a single gigantic painting on loose cloth is at the center of this exhibition. The huge expanses of loose cloth that Grosse works on in the studio allow the artist to respond to the specific architectural conditions in which the work will be housed. Grosse can paint beyond and in response to the frame of the gallery, from the location of her studio. In this particular example, the work hangs from the ceiling, resembling a hulking organic form, almost breathing with vibrant, pulsating color and the spectral silhouettes that interlock and fade into each other. The work reveals inverted chromatic zones produced by stencils of vaguely biomorphic form, as well as painterly gesture balanced with a dizzying array of overwhelmingly vibrant layers that suggest spatial and temporal transformation.

The other works in this exhibition, oriented around this centerpiece, are presented on stretched canvas and reveal a parallel effect of layered or scrambled form that tessellate and slide into each other. These pieces are punctuated by shifts in chromatic temperature, as well as forms created by stencils, folds, or other tools. These spaces of opacity or negative space are interrupted by solid geometries or ambiguous transparencies, creating a kaleidoscopic experience of color and movement that possesses a rhythm all its own. As the press release states, “each composition bears intimate traces of its creation,” thereby acting organically upon the limits of pictorial logic and showing the viewer the potentially hypnotic power of an encounter in the field of vision.

-A. Corrigan

Related Links

Exhibition Page [Gagosian Gallery]

New Museum curator Margot Norton and Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles curator Jamillah James will co-organize the 2021 New Museum Triennial, Art News reports.   (more…)

Installation View. All images via Anna Corrigan for Art Observed.

Tatiana Trouvé’s One Day for Eternity is on view at the König Gallery in Berlin through July 8. This is the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. In this piece, Trouvé continues her exploration of memory, material, and space. The work is the most recent installation in a series entitled Les Indéfinis, which addresses the myriad transformations that an artwork undergoes, morphing from an idea into material, from material into an object of circulation. (more…)

Emmanuel Macron has ordered a review of artist residencies funded by the French state, which some fear could lead to the dismantling of some cultural programs. Macron has appointed Thierry Tuot, the president of the administrative council of the French Academy at Villa Medici in Rome, to lead the review.  (more…)

Fiac has found a new home while the Grand Palais is under renovation, Art Newspaper reports, and will set up shop this year at a temporary venue near the Eiffel Tower. “Now we have clarity. I think galleries will remain on board; they’re excited and want to participate in this new chapter,” says director Jennifer Flay.   (more…)

Theaster Gates gets an interview in the Guardian this week, discussing his soon to open show at Kunstmuseum Basel, and his ongoing commitment to a practice mixing diverse community efforts and art-making.  “My hope is that people would start to see some through-lines between my works of art,” So even though I was a black man in a black neighborhood, talking about black power, what I was trying to demonstrate is that an artist who reads the dynamics of a situation can change the situation.” (more…)

The Met has set another attendance record for this past year, attracting more than 7.35 million guests. “We don’t chase visitor numbers, but they are one sign among many of whether we are doing a good job in serving our mission and the needs of the public,” says Daniel H. Weiss, the Met’s president and chief executive. (more…)

Installation View. All images via Blain Southern.

Now through July 14, Blain Southern London presents America My Hometown, an exhibition dedicated to the formative years of Edward Kienholz’s career in mid-century America. The works in the exhibition span the years of 1954-1967, at which point Kienholz was living and working in Los Angeles. This historical period was hugely significant for the position of the United States and the spread of capitalism globally, to which Kienholz responded directly in his work. The pieces produced by the artist during this time reflect a concern with the political turmoil and social anxiety that marked the political and social circumstances in which he lived.

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Melissa Brown, Swamp, 2018, courtesy Derek Eller Gallery

“The fantasy that reality is changeable: it’s what keeps us alive,” writes Melissa Brown in an anecdotal text for the press release of “Between States,” her first solo exhibition at Derek Eller Gallery in New York. Brown describes a road trip from Tennessee down south to Summerville, Georgia to visit outsider artist Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden, a kitschy wonderland of mosaics and mirrors, the folk art equivalent of Antoni Gaudi’s Park Güell.

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Difference Engine (Installation View), via Jodie Berman for Art Observed

Meandering into spaces of contradiction and surrealist juxtaposition, artist Cory Arcangel has put on his curator cap for a show organized in collaboration with Art21’s Tina Kukielski, organizing an exhibition of works centered around modernity and technology, and framed equally by ideas of potential and hazard. (more…)

Anish Kapoor, Untitled (detail) (2018), via Art Observed

Currently on view at Kamel Mennour’s Paris exhibition space, artist Anish Kapoor has brought a strikingly powerful body of works, mixing styles and forms through a range of pieces to explore a unique and detailed perspective on humanity.  Much like previous works for the artist, twisting desire, power and image through rigorous visual systems, the show presents the viewer and work as inextricably linked, bound together through their shared states and momentary acts of convergence.

Anish Kapoor, Untitled (2018), via Art Observed

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The LA Times spotlights Michael Govan’s push to speed up LACMA’s fundraising drive, as construction continues on the museum’s new expansion. “We’re steadily raising money and signing pledges. I don’t feel there’s any danger that the project isn’t going forward,” Govan says. (more…)

Art Dubai director Myrna Ayad at the fair in August. “My decision to leave was personal; I am excited to pursue my own endeavours,” Ayad says of her departure.  (more…)

Arts Council England is hiring an economist, part of a plan it feels will make it more able to act effectively in financial advocacy for the arts. “We will work to develop skills in that area. One of the things that has historically happened is that you might have [someone who is] good at a particular art form, they are promoted [to a leadership position] but we have not given them that [leadership training] support,” says Arts Council England chief executive Darren Henley. (more…)

Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman’s For Freedoms project has set up shop in New York, planning a major national billboard campaign in the run-up to the midterm elections. “We’re trying to bring these different artists’ voices more into the realm of public discourse,” Thomas says, “which is part of the way that advertising works—it reaches a very wide audience. So we’re trying to think about art and creativity, beyond just the confines of the art world, but out into contexts around the country on the side of the road.” (more…)

The German government has approved a 9% increase in federal arts money, reaching a total budget of €1.8bn. Additional funding has been earmarked for preserving and protecting heritage buildings, archive materials and memorial sites.  (more…)

Cheim & Read is leaving Chelsea, and will move uptown to start  a “private practice, concentrating on the secondary market, ​sculpture​ commissions​ and special projects,” according to a statement by the gallery.  (more…)

The New York Times spotlights the new Swiss Institute space on St. Marks Place. “The ability to engage with such a vibrant, high-traffic neighborhood is unprecedented for S.I.,” says director Simon Castets. “There are many schools, cultural and community organizations in the neighborhood, as well as an incredible history of art making and experimentation.” (more…)

New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission has approved the Frick Museum’s expansion plan, capping a years-long effort that saw four different proposals. “They recognized the strength of the plan to upgrade the building to ensure the long term vibrancy of the Frick,” said Ian Wardropper, the Frick’s director. “The public process can be painful, but we listened and I think the project is better because of that.” (more…)

A piece in Bloomberg this week charts the challenges around stealing fine art, delving into the factors making art theft a far less profitable field than many imagined. “Criminals don’t understand that, because their knowledge of art crime is based on fiction and films,” says Noah Charney, a scholar and author. (more…)

Bloomberg has a piece this week on the fortune of the Roche family, whose wealth built on the cough syrup Sirolin, and the art collection held by the family, has become one of the city of Basel’s arts cornerstones. “I learned how to collect with the family collection,” collector Maja Hoffmann, who has been on the board of the family collection for decades, says. “This I’ve continued to do for all these years.” (more…)

Martin Kippenberger, Ohne Titel (aus der Serie Das Floß der Medusa) (1996) final price: £8,446,500, via Phillips

With another auction in the books, Phillips has rounded out a pair of high-profile evening sales in the British Capital of London this week, running through a well-managed auction that ultimately capped aa strong tally of £34,811,000, with all works selling.  (more…)